


Winter Spring Summer or Fall (The Come Rain or Shine Remix)

by Querulousgawks



Category: Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Male-Female Friendship, References to Drugs, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 17:59:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4231395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few weddings Carrie Bishop goes to, before she goes to her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Spring Summer or Fall (The Come Rain or Shine Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nevertothethird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevertothethird/gifts).
  * Inspired by [In Lovers Meeting](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4078114) by [nevertothethird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevertothethird/pseuds/nevertothethird). 
  * In response to a prompt by [nevertothethird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevertothethird/pseuds/nevertothethird) in the [remixmadness2015](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixmadness2015) collection. 



> The fic "In Lovers Meeting" is actually a series of seven AUs in completely separate universes. This is a remix of Chapter 5: Come Rain or Shine. 
> 
> The title is From Carole King's You've Got a Friend.

When Carrie is ten, her mother wrangles an invite to her first real Hollywood event, a B-lister's wedding reception. She's hoping to meet _A-listers_ , she tells her daughter as they do their makeup together under the hot lights of her vanity mirror, but she's willing to settle for really good dessert. The nanny bailed, and her dad  _doesn't babysit, Joan, God,_  so her mom finds Carrie a dress layered like a wedding cake and brings her along.  Joan Bishop might spend most of her time climbing Southern California's society ladder, but she never once acts like Carrie weighs her down.

Still, the reception is pretty boring until Carrie notices a skinny boy in a suit slip under one of the long tables that line the back of the room. Fascinated, she realizes that all the tables are connected and the tablecloths drape to the ground, like a maze, or a cave, like you could cross the room without anyone knowing. Like you could sneak in the opposite end and scare some punk in the middle, if you felt like it. For instance. 

(The punk's name is Logan Echolls and he almost flips the table when she catches him. Then they work out it's the paparazzi press pass table and his face gets a funny, trembling sneer that makes her want to hit something for him. They'll get caught for sure if they flip it, so she motions him ahead to the next one and yanks the tablecloth viciously as she scrambles after him. They hear papers sliding and vultures shrieking as they spelunk away to safety, and she's known Susan Knight forever but she's pretty sure Logan's gonna be her other best friend.)

When she's nineteen Susan marries  _exactly_  the right kind of guy, not a trust fund kid or that fuckwit Rook, but a newly-graduated CPA, who met her in a running club and who doesn't look down his nose at her teen-mom status  _or_  the real estate license she's going after, one night class at a time. Carrie wears a hilariously ruffled bridesmaid's dress and takes Logan as her date - he helped her plant the drugs that took out Susan's worthless sperm-donor-slash-history-teacher, after all. Three-year old Carole is a bridesmaid too; her dress matches Carrie's. ( _Don't you dare,_ she'd said when Susan had paused over the birth certificate, eyes bright in spite of her exhaustion,  _don't you dare give her this Stephen King cast-off, I'm ditching it as soon as I can._  Susan had smirked and covered the page as she wrote:  _a compromise,_ she'd said, like Carrie wouldn't know, like they hadn't been playing  _You've got a Friend_  at every shitty retro bar with a jukebox since they could get  _into_  shitty retro bars.)  They walk down the aisle together, the little girl beaming and Carrie's hand shaking in her steady one.  _  
_

She meets Lilly Kane at Lynn Echoll's second wedding and she doesn't remember a damn thing else about it. Was her dress red? Her music career was starting to feel real around then and Lynn had asked her especially, said she could use the publicity since Aaron was being - well. Carrie had cut Lynn off with a hug and mouthed  _fuck him_ at Logan over his mother's shoulder, watched the tight line of his mouth relax as he grinned and said it back to her, their motto about fathers in general these days. She had said,  _whatever you need, the sweetheart or the scandal, just tell me so I can dress for it,_ and gotten rewarded with Lynn's rare laugh.

This is what she remembers: Lilly's dress is gold and her neckline is  _obscene_  and once their eyes meet Carrie literally can't look away, it's like every terrible love song she refuses to cover and suddenly believes in completely. She thinks she knows, now, why her mom stayed so long, why Susan couldn't out that asshole _statutory rapist_ on her own, why people put up with hell to stay in the sight-line of a single gaze -  _Are you actually composing?_  Lilly murmurs in her ear. _You look so high right now, should I be finding you Doritos?_ Carrie smacks a palm against her lips and steals her napkin, says _fuck off and find me a pen._ She tries to say it like a rock star, like her heart isn't racing, but Lilly gets a thumb on her wrist when she pulls Carrie's hand down, and yeah, that's the smile of someone who knows.

(Carrie takes the memory of that smile with her to her first nerve-wracking awards ceremony, and to Susan's funeral too soon after; to the first fight with Logan at the top of her spiral and the last one with Lilly at the bottom, the fight that finds her giving in to rehab out of the bone-deep fear of losing them, too. She sees that smile on the inside of her eyelids in every boring twelve step class, every tense phone call with her manager or her mom. So when Lilly meets her at the ritzy checkout center with a milkshake for Carrie and a defiant stare for everyone else, Carrie thinks - for a second - she only imagines it crossing her face. But it's there.)

When they plan their wedding, the year after rehab, she worries more about Lilly's dress than her own. She even asks Logan, in a moment of weakness, if he'll go be supportive while Lilly picks it out. He gives her his dryest glare but she's nervous about Celeste, dammit, he doesn't know how much she digs under Lilly's skin, shakes her confidence and dims her fierceness.  _I just don't want her to_  settle,  _Lo. I want her to get exactly what she wants._ His look changes to her least favorite, I've-had-enough-therapy-to-think-that-was-revealing,and she thinks about strangling him.  _Veronica's going with them,_ he says with a weird certainty, just in time to save himself from asphyxiation.  _Celeste doesn't stand a chance._ Carrie pictures Veronica, Lilly's version of Logan, all watchful eyes and sweet-sharp smile, and she decides to believe him.

Then something else clicks about that conversation, and she ditches Logan to call Lilly immediately after the fitting.  _I wanna make a change to the seating chart,_ she says, and grins at Lilly's outraged groan.  _No, hear me out, you're gonna love this. Take Logan off of Duncan's table and put him - where's Veronica seated now?_   

 


End file.
